Pancakes For Dinner

Protein pancakes, that is. I haven’t posted in a while, and it’s because I’ve been all over the place. I may have been “back on track” for a week, but I took a significant detour the following week. To top it off, I went to Vegas for 3 days last weekend.

What happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas. It made its way into my weekly email update to my trainer (which might I add, was quite painful). I fessed up to only going to the gym twice that week and to willfully disregarding my meal plan (significant offenders being alcohol and a 6 inch tall piece of amazing chocolate cake). I wasn’t following the off season plan and I really didn’t care.

I did have a light bulb moment in Vegas though. I was actually there to support some friends who were running the half marathon in Vegas on Sunday night. Over 33,000 people (plus countless spectators) took to the strip and ran either the half or the full. Awesome energy. I was surprisingly pretty bummed I was just watching and not running. Being surrounded by so many “everyday athletes” made me regret my unhealthy choices. I don’t want to be someone who sees the gym as a chore and comes up with excuses not to go. I don’t want to only eat clean when it’s convenient or when I’m 12 weeks away from a competition. I want to be a healthy, fit, and more importantly, BALANCED person. Making healthy choices shouldn’t be about “my trainer says…” or about “I can’t have this” – it should be about wanting to do what’s good for your body. I want to train hard, eat clean, and be fit because that’s the kind of person I want to be.

I realized my perfectionism had really sabotaged that week for me too. I was super tired and not feeling well. I didn’t feel capable of doing a full weight workout (especially my leg workout – CRAZY intense!) plus 35 minutes of cardio, so I just didn’t go at all. That’s silly. An all or nothing mentality only works if you’re willing to give your “all” all of the time. Weight training is especially important to my off season goals (build muscle), so even if I just did weights or did half of a workout, that would have been so much better than not going at all. The same goes for food – if you eat one unhealthy thing, it’s much better to get back on track with your meals for the rest of the day than to say to hell with it and go to town on junk just because you weren’t perfect.

I was dreading the response from Nicole. She was surprisingly understanding! Part of her response was:

All competitors seem to be type A personalities. All or nothing, things have to be perfect. Very organized and on top of it, but when we are off… we are OFF. And then because we set such high expectations of ourself, when we fail, we get depressed. It is a cycle. You are not perfect. No one is. As long as you live life day to day trying your best and not regretting your decisions you will be much happier. I’m sure Vegas was a blast even though you strayed off your program. I didn’t even hear from you how awesome Vegas was. All I heard was how horrible you ate….

There is more to life than food, the gym, and figure competitions. Health and happiness are what’s important. Focusing on the outcome of an event isn’t the way to be successfully fit and healthy in the long term. You know people who do fad diets or crazy workouts because they want to lose weight for an event, like a wedding or a vacation – do any of them maintain their results afterward? Usually not. That’s because they approach it like a short term quick fix and not a lifestyle change. I am working toward the latter.

I did want to share my protein pancake recipe, because they are my new favorite thing! I did a variation of this recipe from my fitness friend Electra.

Electra’s blog is amazing, by the way. She is the master of clean eating, hardcore training, and healthy living. I’ve made two variations of her Perfectly Moist Pumpkin Protein Pancakes:

Version #1 Peanut Butter

Follow Electra’s recipe except I used peanut butter flavored whey protein and substituted 1 tbsp of natural peanut butter for the pumpkin. I also used vanilla unsweetened almond milk in place of coconut milk.

Version #2 Chocolate Peanut Butter

Use Version #1 variations on the recipe, but use chocolate flavored unsweetened almond milk and add 1 tbsp dark cocoa powder.

Delish! Great by themselves or topped with imitation spray butter and sugar free syrup! 🙂